Introduction: zines in the British Library
The British Library is the national library of the UK, holding international cultural and intellectual collections for current researchers as well as being a custodian of written and spoken heritage, focused largely, but not exclusively, on the UK. Under its ‘Living Knowledge’ programme, launched in 2015, its mission is ‘to make our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment’. In its collecting of UK publishing, the Library aims to be as comprehensive as possible. Zines are collected alongside other small scale and independent publications as a means to capture diverse, non-mainstream expression that is part of current social practice and future cultural memory.Footnote 3 The main challenge for collecting zines in the Library's case is staff resource or time, given that finding out what zines are available is labour-intensive. A budget is available for the purchase of zines, alongside other non-mainstream publications, and there is broad acceptance at all levels that zines are important and should be collected.
Within its collection of printed materials, there are extensive holdings of zines and fanzines that have come into the Library through legal deposit, donation and purchase. Because of their diverse origins, these do not form a defined collection shelved in a single location; rather, they are located throughout the printed collections, with some shelved with UK serials and others alongside rare and artists books. The collection includes counterculture, music, women's zines, perzines and zines produced by artists, alongside a substantial collection of British football fanzines. The Library is not limited to collecting specific genres or on specific subjects, and thus boundaries between formats are not significant for selection purposes. The Library also collects literary and political pamphlets, including poetry pamphlets and chap books, alternative comics, graphic novels, and artists’ books of all sorts. No zine is too arty nor too rough and ready to be considered valuable for the collections. Although the Library is strongest in British material, it also has some zines, pamphlets and alternative comics from the United States and a small number of other countries. The absence of a specific focus by subject or genre makes it harder to define the collection, but it does allow researchers to see zines within the context of independent publishing more generally, and to access them alongside related materials in other formats, such as music recordings or oral history interviews with creators in the case of music fanzines.
Collection Development
The Library's principle means of collection development for publications produced in Britain is through ‘legal deposit’. These are legal regulations requiring one copy of any item published in the UK to be deposited in the British Library, with the other five legal deposit libraries having the right to claim a copy if it is required for their collections. The other legal deposit libraries are the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales, Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian Library at Oxford University and Trinity College, Dublin. For zines and fanzines, legal deposit regulations both help and hinder collection development. On the positive side, legal deposit enables the Library to continue to claim issues of any zines with a regular production schedule that have come to the attention of curators. The process for creating regular claims is automated, so it is less labour-intensive than other means of collection development, and although the Library incurs the costs of storage and processing, it does not expend acquisitions budget.
On the negative side, most zine creators are unaware of legal deposit requirements, or do not consider that they apply to zines, or are actively opposed to submitting their creations to an institution of the state. This adds an additional layer of complexity to collection development. Legal deposit cannot be relied on to bring zines into the collections, so it is necessary to purchase zines or receive donations. But each item needs to be checked against the legal deposit intake in case its creator has submitted it via that route, creating additional work. Contemporary legal deposit regulations are now shaped by the input of the library sector. They aim to ensure that materials are conserved for future research and enjoyment, and to constitute an element of the memory of our society in all its aspects. But in its earliest form, legal deposit originated as an element of copyright legislation aiming to control published expression and suppress dissent, so it is ironic that this should form a core part of the collecting of materials associated with the counter-culture, and understandable that some creators are unwilling to submit their publications through this route.
Legal deposit has worked effectively to bring in some types of zines, notably football fanzines. This has been helped by the fact that football fanzines generally have a regular production schedule based around the club's fixtures. For claiming, they are similar to other serial publications. Producers of football fanzines may not aim to make a profit, but they often have a sufficiently large print run to provide a copy for the British Library without it being too much of an imposition. Producers of football fanzines may also find the concept of the Library preserving a copy of their zine relatively unproblematic. At various points in the Library's history staff with an interest in football have identified fanzines and made contact with their producers. This has resulted in an impressive level of coverage running to well over 2000 titles, including fanzines from community clubs through all the levels to the Premiership. The Library also holds more general fanzines that cover the game as a whole or have regional coverage. The Library receives some current fanzines in print, uses web archiving to conserve those that are now published only online, and buys older sets to fill gaps in coverage, recently acquiring the anthologised issues of The End published by Sabotage Times. We buy from sellers offering issues we require, including via eBay, but only where the price is a reasonable reflection of the original cover price and not inflated as a ‘collectable’ item.
Alongside football fanzines, many music fanzines, and some personal and political zines have also come into the Library through legal deposit. When the Sound Archive was a separate institution, its curators identified and collected music fanzines to complement the popular music recordings they held. This has resulted in strong holdings of music zines from punk onwards. Although these zines were motivated by a DIY ethic, many of their creators maintained a regular production schedule, and this meant there was a good chance the Library could claim each issue. In contrast, contemporary personal and political zines often have an irregular production schedule, so that, even if a curator has become aware of a zine, a claim form may be sent out when there is no current issue to submit. Legal deposit can only function if a curator is in post to identify zines and to supply the legal deposit staff with details of their publisher, as zines do not feature in the bibliographic sources used by the legal deposit office to identify current publications, principally Nielsen BookData.
Although the Library is committed to collecting zines, in practice collecting has ebbed and flowed in line with the interest and time commitment of individual curators. The Library has never employed a ‘zines librarian’ or devoted a post to the task of building a formal zines collection. Collection development has taken place within the context of posts with a much wider set of responsibilities, usually forming a small part of a single post. There have been periods of activity, followed by periods when work demands or reassignment of responsibilities have mitigated against active collecting. For example, UK punk is well represented; riot grrrl (a feminist youth movement that emerged in the United States in the 1990s and inspired young women internationally) is not so well represented, as a result of changing staff responsibilities, with only seven titles amongst 200 feminist zines being catalogued as ‘riot grrrl’. In 2015 the current Contemporary British Collections Department was created. The focus on contemporary society and culture, which for publications means those from 2001 onwards, has given renewed impetus to efforts to capture a wider range of expression outside mainstream publishing. The Non-Print Legal Deposit regulations of 2013 allow the Library to archive e-zines and blogs within its web archiving activities, and this has been useful in allowing us to capture activist expression where we are unable to collect fliers and other ephemera, and is particularly valuable for websites that may be at risk of loss. The websites of zine distributors (distros), zine fairs, and sites related to individual zines or producers form a resource that complements the physical copies of zines in the Library.
Legal deposit regulations are not generally known about outside the world of mainstream publishing. The Library has tried to raise awareness of legal deposit regulations, through its website, blogging and external engagement. For some time, the website of Footprint Workers Cooperative, a printing coop in Leeds that donates copies of zines it prints carried a message on its website promoting legal deposit. The Library has attempted to raise the profile of legal deposit at community engagement events, in conversation with creators tabling at zine fairs, and at academic workshops and graduate study days. But legal deposit – as a set of regulations imposing obligations upon publishers – is problematic in the context of DIY production of counter-cultural expressions. Producers of zines often do not take kindly to being told that they are ‘obliged by law’ to do something, and even if they may be willing in principle to send a copy of their work to the Library, the receipt of a claim form may have the opposite effect from its intention. For this reason in current engagement work, I am more likely to state that the Library is keen to receive copies of zines as a donation, and where I contact zine creators I request a copy rather than ‘claiming’ one. Legal deposit can be a benefit for collecting at scale simply because publications sent to the legal deposit office are processed and catalogued where they arrive, without further communication or handling, but many zinesters prefer zines they have personally created to be acknowledged as a donation. This allows us to thank donors and to affirm that we value these publications, and opens a direct line of communication.
Many zinesters have responded with enthusiasm to requests for donated copies of their zines. Some have donated copies as they publish them, whilst others have responded to a request made by email or in person at zine fairs. Other zine creators have approached the Library to donate issues of zines they have pulled together many years after their original publication. In this post, since April 2015, I have sought to amplify the impact of these zines coming into the collection by inviting their creators to write guest blog posts featured on the Library's website. Examples are the donation of Nick Mann's A Short fanzine about Rocking by Jen KavanaghFootnote 4, Paul Davies’ account of creating Oh Cardiff… Up Yours! Footnote 5, and also Mike Nicholson's post on his zine bio auto graphic.Footnote 6 These posts add value for readers and researchers by setting out the motivations and experience of the zines’ creators, and at the same time help to spread the message that the Library both values and welcomes zines as an element of its collections. Social media sharing of these blog posts – by their creators in particular – helps to raise awareness of the Library's collecting beyond current users. As noted above, the Library has for a few years, received a donation of zines from Footprint, a printing cooperative in Leeds, and this has been extremely valuable for bringing in a selection of zines and pamphlets from locations outside London.
Deposit and donation have been supplemented by the selection and purchase of zines. Since 2015, I have selected materials from online distributors (‘distros’) including Active Distribution, Vampire Sushi and Marching Stars, and this is something I will repeat using a range of suppliers to find different titles. I have also purchased materials at zine fairs such as DIY Cultures, and London Radical Bookfair, and followed up contacts made by myself and a colleague at Bristol Artists Book Event fair and London Small Publishers’ Fair. Buying zines at the point of their publication, rather than only retrospectively, has also enabled the Library to benefit from contacts with their creators, and to incorporate zines into its cultural programme.Footnote 7 Two of the Library's recent free exhibitions have featured zines: Punk 1976–78, in summer 2016, featured zines from that periodFootnote 8, and Gay UK: love, law and liberty in summer 2017 featured more recent zines including one purchased at DIY Cultures. These zines were exhibited with the permission of their creators, and one of the public events related to the exhibition included artist and zinester Jacob V Joyce, creator of Fear brown queers. The exhibition and event were opportunities to show the relevance of zines and to communicate the Library's interest in them as a format.
Since Contemporary British Collections came into being, curators have hosted PhD students on short placements, and this has also provided an opportunity to promote zines and other alternative publications, and to engage with people studying them or producing them. Placement students have worked on projects on punk zines, comics and comic distribution networks, online poetry publishing, interactive narratives and independent publishing committed to inclusivity. During their placements, students have written blog posts and hosted workshops bringing together academics, librarians and cultural producers. These events have been valuable in providing us with an opportunity to learn more about what is available, what researchers needs are and to communicate the message that we welcome donations as a way of building the collections. At corporate level, the Library tends to announce that it ‘receives a copy of every UK publication’ because of its extensive coverage of mainstream publishing, and this may deter would-be donors by giving the impression that we already have near-comprehensive holdings of zines. These events allow us to communicate the reality – that however extensive our holdings may be, we miss more zines than we collect, meaning that donations are very much needed. We also aim to plant the seed of the idea that we would be happy to accept donations of zines, not only from creators, but also from people who have collected them, from personal interest or for research, who are looking for a long-term home for those collections.
I have been reluctant to buy zines from shops unless there are multiple copies of a zine available, mainly because it seems wrong for libraries – particularly a closed-stack reference library – to take zines out of circulation. Zines thrive on immediacy, creating communities of activism in response to current concerns or offering support and affirmation for people in the here and now. Coming across a single issue of a zine in a shop could literally change someone's life in the present, so it would be wrong for the Library to hoover up everything on offer. Buying online through Etsy or zine distributors seems less like taking them out of circulation. The immediacy of zine production is also another reason why the library needs to exercise caution in chasing legal deposit copies or donated copies. The British Library is governed by the legal regulations that founded it, and these forbid items being removed from the collections once they have been accepted. This can be an issue where zines are produced by young people working out an immediate response to situations, or sharing autobiographical accounts not intended for posterity. Zines that are intended to have only a limited circulation between a defined group of people may not be appropriate for the Library to collect. Zines can be viewed within the Library's reading rooms only, and are not made available for digitisation or other forms of circulation. Some zines are used in curator-led ‘show and tell’ events, educational workshops for school students or displayed at graduate study days, in order to highlight the range of resources available within the Library.
The UK and Ireland Zine Librarians network established first through an email group and subsequently through meetings and a web presence has been an important support in undertaking the work of collection development. Because formal information about collecting zines is very limited, especially in a UK context, the network has provided a welcome opportunity for me to learn from others who have longer or closer involvement with zines. The network has provided a forum for knowledge exchange and for discussion about cataloguing zines and making them accessible. In the British Library, as a large institution with process-based roles, the selection of materials, their promotion and engagement with users and producers is a curatorial task, but cataloguing and processing are undertaken by other members of staff. This presents a challenge in that it may be difficult for staff to describe and catalogue zines in the absence of supporting information. I need to take a more active role in supporting the cataloguing of zines so that users can access them fully. One recent change is to introduce the use of the format term ‘zines’ into new catalogue records for zines, and to work retrospectively to include it in older zines, so that users can search for zines more simply. But there is more to be done to establish a more holistic process and understanding of zines so that all staff dealing with them understand their nature and value for Library users and future research.
In conclusion, collection development for zines through deposit, donation and purchase provides our users with many examples of zines across a broad range of subjects and styles. Employing different methods of collection development allows for coverage of numerous titles, but the nature of zine production and distribution means that we are only scratching the surface in relation to what is available. Collecting at zine fairs has been limited to London in recent years, resulting in greater coverage of zines produced in and around London, although this is balanced by buying on line and soliciting donations more widely. The Library aims to be one among many libraries, each with differences in emphasis, trying to collect, preserve and make zines accessible.
